Joost Van Loon: Media Technology: Critical Perspectives (2007)
Filed under book | Tags: · media, media theory, new media, technology
What are media? Why are more and more objects being turned into media? How do people interconnect with the media in structuring their everyday lives? In “Media Technology: Critical Perspectives,” Joost van Loon illustrates how throughout the course of society, different forms of media have helped to shape our perceptions, expectations and interpretations of reality.
Drawing on the work of media scholars such as Marshall McLuhan, Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes and Raymond Williams, the author provides a theoretical analysis of the complexity of media processes. He urges the reader to challenge mainstream assumptions of media merely as instruments of communication, and shows how the matter, form, use and purpose of media technologies can affect content.
The book uses practical examples from both old and new media to help readers think through complex issues about the place of media. This helps to create a more innovative toolkit for understanding what media actually are and the basis for trying to make sense of what media actually do. It uses case studies and examples from television, radio, print, computer games and domestic appliances.
“Media Technology” is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students on media, social theory and critical theory-related courses.
Publisher McGraw-Hill, 2007
ISBN 0335214460, 9780335214464
Length 174 pages
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Marshall McLuhan, Quentin Fiore: The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects (1967–) [EN, ES, PT]
Filed under book | Tags: · alphabet, global village, mass media, media, media theory, print, radio, technology, television
“Marshall McLuhan is the man who predicted the all-pervasive rise of the modern mass media. Blending text, image and photography, his 1960s classic The Medium is the Massage illustrates how the growth of tech no logy utterly reshapes society, personal lives and sensory perceptions, so that we are effectively shaped by the means we use to communicate. This concept, and his ideas such as rolling, up-to-the-minute news broadcasts and the media ‘global village’, have proved decades ahead of their time.” (from the back cover)
Originally published in 1967 by Bantam Books
Produced by Jerome Agel
Publisher Penguin, 2008
ISBN 9780141035826
159 pages
The Medium is the Massage (English, 1967/2008, 10 MB, updated on 2017-4-24)
El medio es el masaje (Spanish, trans. León Mirlas, 1969, 10 MB, added on 2015-1-8)
O meio são as massa-gens (Portuguese, trans. Ivan Pedro de Martins, 1969, 16 MB, added on 2015-1-8)